As Jesus continues to meet with people to teach them how to be ready to meet the Lord, some of the people tell Him about an incident that occurred at the temple in which some people from Galilee were put to death by order of Pontius Pilate, and their blood was mingled with the blood of the animals being sacrificed that day. Apparently, the thought was that the people who were killed must not have been ready to meet the Lord and their horrible death was God’s way of punishing them.

Jesus indicates that this assumption is false by pointing out that these people were hardly the worst sinners in Galilee, so why would God choose them to be the recipients of this type of punishment? He even cites another example in which a tower fell on eighteen people and killed them — they weren’t the worst sinners either, so why would God push a tower over on them? (See Luke 13:1-5.)

What Jesus is saying — to them and to us — is that not every bad thing that happens in life is a punishment from God. In fact, most things are not. The scriptures tell us that the rewards for serving God — and the punishments for not serving Him — come in the next life, not in this one. So, it’s not really spiritually healthy to assume that every time something goes wrong in your life, it must be because you sinned in some way and God is punishing you.

On the other hand, let’s remember who we are — we’re the sons and daughters of God. When you were growing up, if you did something wrong, what happened? If you had good parents, you were probably punished in some way — maybe you had a “time out” and had to sit in the punishment chair, or maybe you were grounded, or maybe your parents had some other methods of punishment. Regardless of how it was carried out, the rationale of a punishment was to get your attention such that you would behave the right way the next time. As they probably told you, they did this because they loved you.

Well, God operates the same way with His sons and daughters. As the Lord said to John in his revelation:

“As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” (Revelation 3:19)

Based on this, there may be times when God is causing or allowing things to go a certain way in our lives in order to get our attention and get us to change our behavior in some way. If God is trying to get our attention, what He wants is for us to examine ourselves. If we’re willing to do that, it will give us some idea of whether God is actually trying to bring something to our attention. If we examine ourselves sincerely and don’t see anything in particular that needs immediate attention, we can probably conclude that whatever went wrong was just something that went wrong because life just works out that way sometimes.

On the other hand, if we do discover something that we should be doing better or differently (or stop doing something that’s wrong), it’s in our best interests to make the necessary adjustments. If God has actually orchestrated some events to get our attention, it’s not something to be ignored. In the scripture referenced earlier, Jesus tells the people to use the stories with the horrible deaths as a wake-up call for themselves — unless they would repent of their own sins, they would also meet a horrible end.

So, if things are going wrong in your life, use your discernment to determine whether God is trying to get your attention. Most times, it will be just life. For example, if you have tickets to a sporting event and it gets rained out, it doesn’t mean you did something wrong. After all, God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). There are many things that just happen to everybody.

However, if you really feel something in your life is happening in a certain way because God is alerting you to change your behavior in some way, do take that seriously. He’s doing it because He loves you and He wants you to succeed. Let Him help you stay on the path that leads to the mansion that He has prepared for you. He’s looking forward to having you inhabit that mansion in His kingdom for eternity.

This article has undergone ministry review and approval.